Robert Hilburn book touches on Johnny Cash's time in S.A.

“Vivian was like a vision from heaven,” the author says of Cash's first wife, Vivian Liberto. They married in San Antonio.

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Robert Hilburn details Johnny Cash's local ties.

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"Out Among the Stars" by Johnny Cash

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Documents for Johnny Cash's marriage to Vivian Liberto in 1954 at St. Ann Catholic Church in San Antonio on Friday, Nov. 15, 2013.

Photo By Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News

Documents for Johnny Cash's marriage to Vivian Liberto in 1954 bear his signature at St. Ann Catholic Church in San Antonio on Friday, Nov. 15, 2013.

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In this 1969 file photo, country singer Johnny Cash is photographed at an unknown location.

Johnny Cash (CMT)

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When Johnny Cash was 18 he carved his name and that of his future first wife's into a wooden bench on the River Walk. Vivian Distin, who divorced Cash after he started abusing drugs, is now writing a book about her life with Cash and their four daughers. And Distin is asking for the bench back. "It was a big part of our courthsip," she said. The carving stated that "Johnny loves Vivian," (POSSIBLEY "JOHNNY LUVS VIVIAN" but due to decades of weathering and additional carving only a few letters are now visible including the J in Johnny and part of Vivian's name. City officials have removed the bench from the River Walk out of fear that it would be stolen. They are considering whether they can turn it over to Distin if she buys a replacement bench. Thursday October 21, 2004. (Robert McLeroy/Staff)

Photo By ROBERT MCLEROY/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

When Johnny Cash was 18 he carved his name and that of his future first wife's into a wooden bench on the River Walk. Vivian Distin, who divorced Cash after he started abusing drugs, is now writing a book about her life with Cash and their four daughers. And Distin is asking for the bench back. "It was a big part of our courthsip," she said. The carving stated that "Johnny loves Vivian," (POSSIBLEY "JOHNNY LUVS VIVIAN" but due to decades of weathering and additional carving only a few letters are now visible including the J in Johnny and part of Vivian's name. City officials have removed the bench from the River Walk out of fear that it would be stolen. They are considering whether they can turn it over to Distin if she buys a replacement bench. Thursday October 21, 2004. (Robert McLeroy/Staff)

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There was a time when Johnny Cash's name didn't make much of an impression.

That may explain why Elmore L. Richey never got around to telling his great-niece that he'd issued a marriage license for one John R. Cash and Vivian Dorraine Liberto on Aug. 5, 1954.

The 22-year-old Cash and his 20-year-old fiancée were married two days later at St. Ann Catholic Church just off Fredericksburg Road with an uncle of the bride, the Rev. Vincent Liberto, conducting the ceremony.

“I feel very honored to know that my uncle witnessed Johnny C's wedding,” Betty Richey Brack of Amarillo said in an email.

A vivid childhood memory is hearing “Ring of Fire” as she was being driven to summer camp.

Her late great-uncle, a former Bexar County clerk, “loved following movie stars, famous people and Texas history,” Brack said.

But Cash hadn't become the Johnny Cash quite yet. He had yet to write “I Walk the Line” for his girl.

That story and much more is told with clear-eyed, riveting detail in Robert Hilburn's new book, “Johnny Cash: The Life.”

The former Los Angeles Times music critic, who counts among his earliest assignments Cash's concert at Folsom Prison in 1968, doesn't skimp on Cash's connection to the Alamo City, which goes back more than 63 years.

He arrived for basic training at Lackland AFB in late summer 1950.

He returned to San Antonio after being stationed in Landsberg, Germany. In late April 1951, Cash was stationed at Brooks AFB.

On July 18, 1951, he met his future wife at a roller rink and asked her to call him “Johnny.” He hadn't used that nickname before. Until then, he'd been J.R. or John.

“I thought I knew Johnny Cash pretty well,” said Hilburn, who aimed to connect the country singer's personal life to his artistry. “I didn't know the darkness in his life. It was much darker.”

What he found was a character “far more complex than I had imagined” and “troubling.”

The memories of the early rock 'n' roll and country singer in San Antonio feel more soft focus.

“Vivian was like a vision from heaven,” Hilburn said.

There is the image of the teenage Cash and Liberto — who were married for 13 years and had four daughters — using a pocketknife to carve their names into a wooden bench along the River Walk near La Mansión after a stroll.

The inscription “Johnny loves Vivian” went largely unnoticed for more than 50 years. (The city removed the bench and placed it in storage after it was rediscovered in 2004. It was donated to the Witte Museum in June 2013).

In October 2004, the Express-News published an excerpt from a love letter Cash wrote in the early '50s to Liberto while he was again stationed overseas. It was about that bench.

“Are you still going to keep 'our bench' with the names on it? I hope you do. I can just see the people in S.A. walking around with 'Johnny loves Vivian' on the seat of their pants, but I don't care who knows it.”

The soon-to-be famous man in black was a lovesick pup pining for his San Antonio sweetheart. The long-distance romance also inspired Cash to write. For example, “Hey, Porter” was written in anticipation of seeing Vivian again.

“He was not a happy camper in the Air Force,” Hilburn said. “Everybody in the barracks was getting 'Dear John' letters. She stuck with him. For three years they wrote those letters back and forth. Just amazing.”

Witte President Marise McDermott is amazed, too. She said the bench will go on display inside the new Research and Collections Center in late January.

“It's a pretty big deal,” McDermott said. “It's historic. It's so iconic. It was vetted and met every criterion. This artifact has a storyline.”

Cash and Liberto married just as Cash was starting to pursue his dream of making records for Sun Records in Memphis. After the ceremony at St. Ann (the Rev. Jim Rutkowski said the historic record of the marriage is kept in a vault at the church), the couple had a reception at the St. Anthony Hotel. They then headed to Memphis, where Cash had found a job as an appliance salesman.

“This angel comes into his life, this beautiful girl. He pretty much decided he wants to marry her within weeks,” Hilburn said.

They divorced in 1967.

“It's sad because it wasn't meant to be,” Hilburn said. “Think about it, they only knew each other 17 days before he goes to Germany ... the seeds of the breakup are there from the beginning.

“But San Antonio was real important to him because it was Vivian's home. He always had a fondness for San Antonio. The San Antonio part was the beginning. That was the hope and the optimism and the dreams and stuff.”

Tony Liberto appreciates Hilburn's portrayal of Vivian, his second cousin. His father was one of the groomsmen.

“I've read a few excerpts from it, and it is more of a tribute to Vivian and who she really was,” said Liberto, who is president of Ricos Products Co. “That one movie, 'Walk the Line,' it portrayed her as a not very loving kind of wife, and I don't think that was her at all. It was just a trying time for her, trying to raise four girls while he was on the road.”

Liberto said the family connection is a source of pride. A “God Bless Johnny Cash” bumper sticker graces the back of his vehicle.

There is no ill will, he added. He met Johnny Cash as a child when his father took him to see the singer at the HemisFair Arena in September 1968. Liberto sat on his dad's shoulders at the foot of the stage. Cash noticed.

“He picked me up, and he put me on stage next to him and finished the song,” Liberto said.

For Cash to get his dream girl, he had to deal with realities of the Catholic Church in the 1950s.

He was a Baptist. In July 1954, Cash answered questions in the church's multipage Investigato De Statu Libertatis a Parocho Facienda Sponsa, responding that he was not a Mason or a member of a condemned society.

Both Cash and Liberto stated they'd been engaged for 16 months.

He signed a document, witnessed by his mother, attesting that he'd never been married. The day before the church ceremony, he signed another document promising to raise their children in the Catholic faith.

The marriage is recorded in an old marriage register on Page 14, entry No. 987. The detailed handwritten entry also shows that the marriage was later annulled.

But the wedding day was beautiful.

Rutkowski took over the St. Ann parish in 2011.

“I knew who Johnny Cash was,” he said. “But I like more opera and classical and stuff like that.

“I think it's glamorous. Our parishioners know that he was married here.”